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Steely Dan's 1977 album, "Aja" is a masterpiece of experimentation, and an all time classic.
We highlighted the first single from the album (and "Great Song of the '70s"), "Peg," back on 5/20/20, and you can read about it by clicking the link below.
The follow-up single was another "Great Song:" "Deacon Blues," and there's so much background behind the song, the easiest way to present it is with bullet points! So here goes:
* The lyric, "They call Alabama the Crimson Tide/Call me Deacon Blues" is a double football reference. Back in the 70s, The University of Alabama Crimson Tide was a football powerhouse, led by legendary coach Paul "Bear" Bryant.
*This led many people to believe that Deacon Blues was referring to the Wake Forest College Demon Deacons--who only won a handful of games during the same time period.
*Although the intent was to draw a parallel metaphor between success and failure, Donald Fagen claims the "Deacon" refers to pro football hall-of-famer Deacon Jones and that it came down to matching syllables lyrically. "Crimson Tide/Deacon Jones."
He also mentioned that the song was influenced by the authors Norman Mailer and Alfred Bester.
* Walter Becker explained it in grammatically correct non-football terms: "The protagonist is not a musician; he just sort of imagines that would be one of the mythic forms of loser-dom to which he might aspire."
As you can see, Donald and Walter were pretty deep thinkers.
And they knew exactly what they wanted when recording "Deacon Blues."
For example, they wanted the saxophone solo to sound like the tenor sax that played going into commercials on "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson." They tracked down "The Tonight Show's" Pete Christlieb, who stopped by the studio and recorded his part after a taping of the show.
Donald and Walter were famous for demanding several takes from guest musicians, but Pete was done in 30 minutes after only two takes.
The song itself has quite a distinctive sound--and has become a staple on classic rock stations everywhere.
For the record, when "Deacon Blues" was released as a single from "Aja" in 1978, it reached a very respectable #14 in Canada, and #19 in the US.
There's no doubt that it's a "Great Song of the 70s!
Deacon Blues:
"Peg" (Blog Post):
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